Sadly, you will not be only person who comes here and gets hammered with disagrees and bubble downs for pointing out a fact that's not convenient.

The general goal of most modern CPU/GPU is to get more performance at lower clock speeds and has been for about 7 years.

My Quad Core i5 runs at a lowers clock speed than my previous Core 2 Quad Q6600 but it outperforms it by near 3 times while using less electricity to do it.

My new GTX 560 Ti also consumes less power than my previous GTX 260 but outperforms it in every possible category by leaps.

None of the Nintendo haters here want to hear things like that though.

They don't want to understand these differences. They just wanna scream "Oh, look at those low numbers, its so weak, haha!" With complete ignorance of what those numbers mean or how they work. Pure fanboyism.

Exactly. People don't get it. I can have a super overclocked dual-core Pentium (if those exist) and it'll be crap to an i3. Newer architecture allows this phenomenon to exist. Calling the WiiU out on clock speeds is like saying ssd's suck because their capacity is lower than an hdd, and thus worse.

Although clockspeed alone is no real measure of performance, we have other known factors that would help shed light on the matter. Clockspeeds of the chip only confirm to us that it is exceptionally slow.

Crucially, we have information like the die sizes from anandtech's teardown and the machine's power consumption.

We know that the CPU then is really small built on 45nm, no bigger than 360's CPU and definitely smaller than PS3's. In context PS3's CPU is small(234m transistors) compared to a modern dual core chip, even a Pentium G630 is over 500 million transistors, around half of that is cache.

"My Quad Core i5 runs at a lowers clock speed than my previous Core 2 Quad Q6600 but it outperforms it by near 3 times while using less electricity to do it."

The reason for this is not magic, it is just a sandy bridge i5 quad core has MORE than DOUBLE the number of transistors as a Core 2 Q6600. (by the way, all these chips have higher clocks than Q6600 too) It is made on a more advanced process so the transistors it has are smaller and allows further optimal design. However if you made them on the same process size, the i5 chip will be much, much larger.

As we know the process size and die size of Wii U's CPU, then it is plainly not chock full of transistors that small. The only thing that was going to save Wii U's CPU here then was having a really fast clockspeed like over 4ghz. But looking at the power consumption it was fairly clear this wasn't gonna be happening.

We know the architecture is old, we know the die is not very big, we know the power consumption is low. Even before we knew the clockspeeds, we knew then this was not a fast CPU and all this does is confirm low clockspeeds too.

Because of the wide array of factors now known, clockspeed as well, there can be no denying how slow the CPU is. Its very small, its based on old architecture, its low power, and its low clockspeeds.

You mean overall system performance. It seems fairly obvious that Wii U's overall system performance is not significantly greater than PS3 or 360. I said before it is more like insignificantly faster than 360/PS3.

Wii U has strengths and weaknesses but like a lot of things, the lowest performing aspect will effectively limit maximimum performance in the end.

The amount of RAM Wii U has is already a strength compared to the other consoles, so a bit more free RAM isn't really going to help much. Whereas something like PS3's RAM was critically important versus 360 so every last megabyte counted when Sony shrunk the OS.

Nintendo could look at freeing up CPU cycles if the OS uses a bit. Don't expect too much though. Even a massive clockspeed jump on PSP (when sony unlocked the CPU from 222mhz to 333mhz) only slightly improved graphics.

Wii U's CPU is just outright slow even by 2005 standards which is pretty amazing really. Devs now have to work with what they have got.

articles all over again. When Xbox360 launch is was $400 for the premium and $300 for the arcade. The Wii U launch price was $300 basic, and $350 deluxe. The author also failed to mention that these were simply ports and nothing else. The developers simply rushed out a product just to say they had something available at launch. I already own a ps3 and Xbox360 so why would I buy a Wii U for multiplatform games? I'm buying it for titles that I can only get on the WII U.

The only thing thats been proven is that current generation games are CPU dependant and Wii U asks developers to use new modern tech a GPGPU that assigns the GPU tasks the CPU would usually do. Its obvious developers are rushing ports out, leading to some bad ports.

I agree as well. This is Nintendos first hd console and it's really showing. Now they are going to play catch up. I'm afraid that it's going to be Wii all over again. While we will get some first party gems, everything else including third party will suffer. Where's the incentive for consumers with 360/PS3 to pick up the WiiU? For me, it's certainly not the tablet controller. At this point, I'm going to consider picking one up until a discount and some more quality games come out. $300 is asking too much for what they are offering at the moment.

i dont know if its just me, but i kind of like weaker hardware,, its something rudimentary and mechanical about it,, like pushing a small 1.2 Litre car engine to its limits rather then a hulking big V8 engine that will not be pushed to its extremes,,, more basic hardware has a novel feel about it, that big specs and chips dont have. do others share the same feeling or is it just me?

I don't know that I can say I "like", or prefer weaker hardware, but at the same time I can't say I'm against it in any way either. I still plug in the SNES from time to time, and I still have fun. I LOVED a lot of the Wii games this gen as well. I also love the latest “most cutting edge” games too though. I think it just boils down to, I love “GAMES”, I have since I was 3 and handed an Atari 2600 joystick. I still remember my first NES Christmas, it was f#%kin epic to actually own Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt, and be able to bust it anytime. I just like games, no matter if it’s on the most powerful PC, or an sorry old Tiger Watch, I don’t care I’m down period. I guess I can say, it doesn't matter at all to me either, as long as the game's fun.

Nintendo "CAN" do both you know, release good games and have their console pack a punch SNES is a good example of this. You know what pisses me off about Nintendo and shows just how cheap profit driven scrooge of a company they have become is when Reggie says "It only takes 1 game sold at launch to turn a profit on the Wii U", this really disgusts me with all the profit turned from DS,Wii and now 3ds they couldn't pack the Wii U with better guts and take a loss for at least a year or two and truly future proof the Wii U against the PS4,next Xbox, or better yet why didn't they just wait a half year longer, why rush it out to the market when it's clearly not much of an improvement over the PS3,360. Do they really think people are going to choose to buy their multiplats (if they get any) over their PS4, next Xbox? Heck people who own a PS3,360 right now are/will probably still buy their multiplats for those systems instead of their Wii U.

Been saying this forever but I just get called a fanboy or a troll but I just realize what Nintendo has been doing for years now and I am tired of it.

Richest gaming division in the world yet they produce the weakest cheapest devices in the gaming industry.

God I sound like broken record but when will people open their eyes and stop accepting this type of business practice? Nintendo is practically raping it's consumers blind and they could careless. They remind me more of Apple than Nintendo these days.

The Wii U isn't even worth the money it cost now. Just like the 3DS was never worth $250 when it was first released also.

How can you price something that is weaker, has less features and simply cannot out perform 7 year old consoles pricing it for more than what those consoles sell for now?

I mean fuck you can get a Xbox 360 for $99 and a PS3 for $200 yet they still out perform this new system.. So Nintendo feels it should cost more than those? How does this add up to people? It doesn't to me that is why I stopped buying Nintendo's cheap crap.

Thing is I am not even a graphics whore, I just enjoy good games but it's getting to a point in time where you just expect better hardware because it's easily available.

Just like you wouldn't expect to be driving a steam powered car in 2012 still, as much as it may get you by just fine without it being a problem, you still have to think why the hell hasn't it gotten any better or changed yet? Pretty much how I feel every time Nintendo releases something new..

People are still making excuses for this thing saying oh well it may not be as powerful as the PS4 or 720.. Really!? No, I think there is a snowballs chance in hell it would be, considering it's not more powerful than 7 year old systems, it would make literally no sense at all if was close to the PS4 or 720..

While a lot of people come in with these insane requests, does anyone remember that the gamepad is ALSO included? To me I always felt like that was where a good % of the costs went. I mean, did you REALLY expect a device on par with the PS4 / next Xbox with the gamepad all for 300 dollars? To me that just seems insane. By no means am I defending the Wii U, but people seem to act like the gamepad is a 10 dollar freebie included so people can use the device, but in reality it's a nifty device that lets you play without looking at the TV. Do I think that justifies it existing? No, of course not. Do I think it should be factored into the price? I don't see how you could logically explain Nintendo losing money on every gamepad and selling the system at 200 or so (what it's probably worth).